On the Development of the Proto–Northern Jê Rhotic in Panará Historical Phonology

Abstract

Comparative evidence is provided for a number of developments in the historical phonology of Panará, a Jê language spoken in central Brazil, in particular for the reflexes of the rhotic *ɾ reconstructed for the Proto–Northern Jê ancestral language (and, in many cases, for Proto-Jê as well). Aside from their contributions to the understanding of a family much of whose history remains unknown, the diachronic hypotheses presented and evaluated here touch on issues of general interest for the field of historical linguistics, such as the phonetic grounding of sound change and its relation to regularity, the detection of borrowings, and the nature of subgrouping arguments.